


Into the Woods

by McKelly



Category: Mage: The Ascension, Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Blood Drinking, Blood Magic, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Childhood Trauma, Dark Fantasy, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mages, Magic, Magical Awakening, Monsters, Past Child Abuse, Protective Siblings, Vampires, Verbena, Wilderness, touchstones (vt:m)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 11:02:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18871885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McKelly/pseuds/McKelly
Summary: Cadence, a smartass, take-no-shit Anarch Gangrel gets offered a job she can't turn down: protecting her former foster sister Reagan, who's about to awaken as a mage. When everything goes to hell, Cadence is forced to confront some of her past demons and learn just what she's willing to do to keep Reagan safe.This story is set in the world of Burn it Down, a Vampire: the Masquerade livestream by Simulacra Studios. If you like what you read, please consider watching the show at twitch.tv/simulacratv. We stream every other Wednesday at 7 pm.





	1. Chapter 1

Cadence slipped out the back entrance of her brother’s apartment. She was careful never to be seen going in or out, and between the starless night and the shadows from a few other buildings, Cadence was pretty she’d gone unnoticed. She absentmindedly scratched the wrist where she’d bled out for Benji just a few minutes earlier. It didn’t matter how long she’d been kindred, or how many times she’d reinforced her brother’s blood bond; the skin always felt strange when it knit back together.

Cadence glanced over her shoulder at the back door. She’d made sure to put a little extra vitae in Benji’s Thermos, just in case, but would that really be enough? All it would do was delay the inevitable if something did happen to Cadence.

Of course, nothing bad would actually happen. Cadence wouldn’t let it. She was going to kick this job’s ass the way she kicked ass at everything else. All she had to do was keep a young woman safe while out in the woods. Cadence could do that. She’d kept Reagan safe before, and she could do it again. She wasn’t going to let any big, bad forest scare her. It didn’t matter that she’d never set foot outside of Boston before moving to Atlanta. She was a _Gangrel_ , dammit! It was in her fucking blood!

At least she hoped it was.

On the subject of blood, Cadence needed to get some in her sooner rather than later. She was not heading into the wilderness on an empty stomach. Especially not when she was supposed to be looking after someone else. She could already feel her Beast growling; it wasn’t happy that she gave up her vitae for Benji. She’d gotten her hands on a few packs of bagged blood for the job, but she didn’t want to break into those until she absolutely had to.

Cadence pulled her baseball cap low over her eyes and set off into the night. Thankfully there were a few bars within walking distance of Benji’s apartment. It didn’t take long for her to find someone wandering around by himself. It was a young guy, maybe in his mid-twenties, with tan skin and short curly hair. He was hanging up fliers on street posts and the sides of buildings. It was probably for some live band at one of the bars, though Cadence didn’t look too hard at them. Odds were high that the music was terrible anyway. She followed the guy for a block or so, keeping far enough back so she wouldn’t be noticed. And even if she was, people tended to overlook girls who were as short and scrawny as Cadence. It made it that much more fun to overpower them.  
  
Eventually the guy took a turn into a narrow alley between a bar and a boarded-up shop front, out of the streetlights and immediate sight of anyone else who might be wandering about. Cadence darted into the alley behind her mark. When he was distracted with taping up another poster, she struck. He wasn’t hard to subdue. Cadence pounced on his back, wrapped one arm around his side, and clamped her free hand over his mouth. Her fangs were in his neck before he even had a chance to scream.  
  
Cadence groaned into the bite. She closed her eyes and savored the thick, delicious fear in her prey’s blood. She hadn’t taken the time to get him really worked up - there was only an hour before she had to meet her ride for the evening - but the surprise of the attack was still more than enough to give her meal that sweet, scared kick she enjoyed so much.  
  
After a minute or two Cadence felt the worst of the hunger fade, until it was nothing more than a slight twinge in her gut. She loosened her grip on the young man and opened her eyes… and suddenly it wasn’t tan skin and short hair in her field of vision. It was pale, freckled skin and long red hair. Labored, high-pitched gasps and the smell of floral shampoo assaulted Cadence’s ears and nose.  
  
Cadence screamed. A mouthful of the man’s blood burst over her lips and down the skin of his neck. She barely remembered to lick the bite closed as she shoved her prey away. Her prey crumpled against the wall. Cadence bolted. She sprinted down the rest of the alley and ducked behind the bar. Every muscle in her body trembled, every hair on her skin stood on end. She stood perfectly still and waited for the hallucination to fade from her mind. A low, angry growl rumbled in the back of her mind. There were no words, but there was no mistaking the Beast’s message.

_Give me what I want. Give it to me or I take her instead._

“Not tonight, asshole.” Cadence wiped the blood from her mouth with her wrist. She rolled her shoulders back and tried to calm her nerves. She had a job to do, and she wasn’t going to let some stupid voice in her head fuck it up.  
  
\- - -

It didn’t take long to get to the motel where Cadence agreed to meet her ride. She leaned up against a vending machine near a stairwell and waited. If her heart still beat, it would have been racing. What was she thinking, accepting a job from a _mage,_ of all things? Vivianne didn’t seem especially hostile toward kindred. Just uncomfortable. But magic was still magic. And magic couldn’t be trusted any more than a kindred could be trusted.  
  
Fucking hell, what was Reagan doing getting involved with mages? Cadence wanted to see her foster sister again. She wanted to be able to help her, to protect her. But this whole situation just... reeked. It was a simple job on the surface - protect Reagan while she tried to “awaken” whatever magic she may or may not have, and try not to get either of them dead in the process - but Cadence had no idea what that entailed. And that wasn’t even touching on why _she_ had to be the one to do it.  
  
“She may have to remember,” Vivianne had said. As if Reagan remembering anything about her childhood with Cadence was a good thing.  
  
Worse still, Cadence had to catch a ride to the job with a goddamn _werewolf_. Because that was exactly how she wanted to spend part of her evening: cooped up in a car with a mangy, flea-bitten she-wolf. Yes, she was heading into what was technically werewolf territory. Yes, they had every right to enforce that border. It still meant letting one of those werewolves into the domain Cadence’s coterie managed. It didn’t matter that Cadence had selected the rattiest motel on the farthest edge of her domain as the meetup spot. A Wolf still knew the general area where she slept, and that did not feel right at all.

Cadence absentmindedly flipped her phone open and shut as she waited. The minutes passed like decades, but eventually she saw an older pickup truck pull into the nearly-empty parking lot. She smelled it almost as soon as she saw it. The stupid thing absolutely reeked of french fries. Or something similar to it. Cadence grimaced. She guessed the truck probably ran on biodiesel. Which meant she’d be smelling that fuel all the way to the park. Fucking fantastic.  
  
The truck’s passenger side door flew open. The driver - a tall, dark-haired woman with an Amazonian build and what Cadence assumed was a permanent stick up her ass - glowered at her from behind the steering wheel.  
  
“Get in.” The woman’s voice boomed over the sound of the radio. It was playing 70s southern rock.  
  
Cadence rolled her eyes. She hopped into the truck, shut the door, and the dark-haired woman peeled out of the motel parking lot. Cadence didn’t even have time to get her seatbelt on before they were speeding down the road towards the highway.  
  
The first few minutes of the trip passed in tense, fry-scented silence. Cadence had met this Wolf before and didn’t have any particular desire to get to know her any better. She was content to ignore the other woman for the entirety of the tip. But as they merged onto the northbound highway, Cadence couldn’t help but notice a look of utter disgust on the Wolf’s face. It was hard to ignore how deliberately the woman was starting at the road, the whiteness of her knuckles as she dug her hands into the steering wheel, or the way her nostrils flared whenever she did sneak a glance at Cadence.  
  
“Aww, do I unsettle you?” Cadence stretched her arms above her head, cracked her shoulders, and tried to settle into the passenger seat as comfortably as she could. If she was gonna be treated like a bad smell, she’d be sure to leave that smell all over the upholstery.    
  
“Yeah, you do.” The Wolf turned down the radio when she spoke. “And the fact that you probably don’t even know why is even more disturbing.”  
  
“I wish I could say I’m sorry for not know what the hell you’re talking about, but I’m not.”  
  
“That is… okay...” The Wolf didn’t seem to know what to make of Cadence’s reply. She paused a moment, then let out an exasperated sigh. Her brow wrinkled as she struggled to find the right words. “I just… w ell, I don’t know, _some_ of your kind seem to be able to not stink of the… of… yeah. I mean, you smell worse than the last time I saw you and that’s all I’m gonna say. So whatever you’ve been up to... I don’t know, but maybe you should get right with whatever you pray to.”

Cadence didn’t pretend to know what the Wolf was talking about, nor did she care to learn more. So she shrugged and turned her eyes back to the road. She didn’t have to make herself accountable to anyone, let alone an angry, nosy furbag.  
  
The rest of the trip - a whole forty, agonizing minutes - went by in the same silence it started with. The Wolf turned up the radio again. Cadence regretted not thinking to bring her walkman along for the ride, especially once they turned off the highway and started driving through winding mountain roads. Cadence tightened her grip around her lunch bag when the trees started getting thicker. Part of her wanted to tear open one of her blood bags now, just to calm her nerves.  
  
A wave of relief washed over her when she saw the sign for their destination: Red Top Mountain State Park. It wasn’t long before the Wolf drove into an area full of rental cabins. She pulled up in front of one in the back of the cluster.  
  
“So this is, uh, kind of shared territory. There’s a place around here where we don’t want anyone going. There’s a place around here that _they_ don’t want anyone going. But the rest of it? Our interests overlap enough that we’re comfortable maintaining it together. So just, uh, don’t wander off.”  
  
Cadence nodded. She assumed that “they” were Atlanta’s mages. Otherwise Reagan had no business being out here.  
  
“So are there, uh, trail markers or landmarks or something that I should keep an eye out for? So I know when to turn around?”  
  
“I’m told you’ll be with someone who knows where they’re supposed to go.”  
  
“It never hurts to double check.”  
  
The Wolf groaned. She pulled a folded trail map out of the side of her door and pointed out several landmarks. “Seriously, just don’t go anywhere near here, or here, or here. Or we will kill you.”  
  
“Fair.” Cadence pulled a tiny notebook and a pencil out of her messenger bag so she could scribble down the names. Once that was done she opened the passenger door and slipped out into the night air. She hadn’t so much as shut the door again before the Wolf revved the truck’s engine and sped out of the campground.  
  
Cadence turned to the cabin she’d been dropped off at. It was a nice building, fairly new or recently remodeled, with a picturesque treeline behind it. Or it might have been picturesque if Cadence wasn’t feeling her B east recoil at the thought of being so far from the city. Or if her guts weren’t tying themselves in knots thinking about what waited for her inside that cabin.  
  
Cadence raised her hand to knock at the door. Her muscles didn’t seem to want to obey her at first, and it took actual effort to get it to move. It had been, what, nineteen years since Cadence last spoke to her foster sister? Twenty? Not that it mattered, what with Reagan probably not remembering anything about it. And also being apprenticed to a human mage. A mage who seemed to get indigestion just _looking_ at kindred. Which was all fine, really. Totally fine. One hundred percent okay.  
  
Cadence knocked a little harder than she probably should have. The volume actually made her wince.  
  
A few seconds later, Reagan opened the door. Cadence stood there for a good, long moment just staring at the young woman in front of her. It was hard to believe this was the same girl Cadence had shared a home with all those years ago. Back then she’d been a twig-thin little kid, with big hazel eyes and pig-tailed red hair that always seemed to tangle no matter how much their foster mom brushed it. Her hair was much neater now, flowing over her shoulders in soft waves. She was nearly a head taller than Cadence and significantly less twiggy. She looked healthy. She looked beautiful.  
  
“Hey.” Cadence had to force the greeting through the lump in her throat. She raised her right hand in a stiff, awkward wave.  
  
“Hi.” Reagan tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “So yeah... I’m told that… I was told you’d be meeting me here. Do, uh, do I need to invite you in? Is that a thing?” She was smiling, but it was the type of smile that was more for courtesy than anything else.

“No, no, it’s fine. That’s not a thing.” Cadence shoved her hands in her pockets to hide the way her nails were digging into her palms.  
  
“Oh! Oh, okay. Good.” Reagan stepped out of the door way and waved Cadence inside. Cadence stepped over the threshold at a pace that was maybe a bit too fast.  
  
“Yeah that whole… invitation thing? Total bunk. A lot of things about us are.” Cadence found a wall to lean against - somewhere between where the open kitchen blended into a sitting area - and plastered herself to it. “We like it that way.”

“Cool. Cool. Yeah…” Reagan wandered toward the kitchen table. She had a decent sized backpack laid out with an array of hiking supplies and strange, unidentifiable objects Cadence assumed were meant for the supernatural portion of their journey. It looked like Reagan was in the middle of packing everything up. There was a small white envelope on the edge of the table. Reagan snatched it up and walked it over to Cadence. “I was, uh, told to give you this.”  
  
Cadence took the envelope and opened it up. Inside was a small, crude - looking clay medallion. Cadence carefully took it between two of her fingers. It looked a little under baked, and the edges crumbled slightly were it pressed against her skin. There was a rough drawing of a net on one side. The envelope had a note inside it as well:  
  
_“She knows what to do._  
_Follow her lead._ _  
If you start to lose control, break the medallion_.”

Cadence gently placed both the note and the medallion back in the envelope and slipped the envelope into her pants pocket. Reagan went back to organizing her supplies. She packed and repacked her backpack several times before she was satisfied with how everything fit. Cadence watched Reagan’s every move like a cat. She seemed so... so _normal._ She was training to be a witch. She was in the same room as an undead predator. And yet she looked for all the world like a regular college student. But then what was she supposed to look like? How was she supposed to carry herself? Cadence didn’t know. But she _wanted_ to know, so she kept watching.

“You know, Vivianne didn’t say, so what’s your name?” Reagan shoved the last of her magical foci into the backpack and zipped it up.  
  
“Cadence.”  
  
Reagan nodded. “Oh, okay. I think I knew a Cadence once, but that was a while ago.”  
  
Cadence bit the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t expected anything different, but it still hurt to hear Reagan say that.

“We’re, um, we’re going out into the dark.” Reagan slung her backpack over her shoulder. “So I hope you’re familiar with that sort of thing.”  
  
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.” Cadence tried to sound confident. She wasn’t sure it worked. “I guess you, ah, you could say my particular… breed is kinda made for it? Or something like that. It’s weird. But I can handle it.”  
  
“Okay, okay. Fine. Well , I mean , you’ve got power, so I assume you know how to wield it.”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“I’m just told you guys stick to the cities, and well, um…” Reagan stammered for a few moments. It looked like she was just as nervous as Cadence. “Listen, I’m , like, super curious about your whole deal, but I don’t want to be rude. And we have stuff we have to do tonight, so don’t take it like I’m not interested in your - your whole thing…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Cadence pushed herself off the wall and started walking towards the door. She stopped by the door frame and leaned against that instead. “I’ll answer what I can, if you wanna ask. But I got a few questions too. Like what exactly we’re supposed to be doing out here. Vivianne wasn’t exactly clear on that. So what’s up?”

“That’s a good question, actually.” Reagan seemed relieved. Her smile actually looked a little genuine. “We’re going into the woods. At first. And then we’re going into the Real Woods.”

“Real Woods?”  
  
“There are places that are, uh, _in_ the world but not _part_ of it. Does that make any kind of sense?”  
  
“Uh, sure? I mean, as long as you know where we’re going.”  
  
“We’ve mapped it out as best we can. Some places move from time to time, but we generally know what’s out here. I know where we’re going. It’s gonna be a bit of a hike, but I’m prepared for that sort of thing, and I assume you’re no slouch either. So it’ll be fine.”  
  
“Got it.” Cadence didn’t actually get it, but Reagan didn’t need to know that.  
  
“Just, um, if I tell you to do something, please try to do it as quickly as possible. Because there are rules to some things out here, so you know-”  
  
“Don’t worry, I got it.”  
  
“Great I’m just , uh, gonna ... you know…” Reagan pointed over to the bathroom. Cadence shrugged and Reagan walked off. She was only gone a few minutes, though Cadence could have sworn it felt longer, and before long the two of them locked up the cabin and set out into the night.  
  
Reagan led Cadence to a trailhead not far from the cabin. It wasn’t a particularly dense trail at first. That didn’t stop the trees from blocking out what little light came from the few occupied cabins at the campsite, and within minutes the only illumination came from a few patchy rays of moonlight filtering through the canopy. Reagan pulled a flashlight out of her backpack and turned on the dimmest setting.  
  
“We don’t want to be too visible out here,” she whispered.  
  
Cadence nodded. She made sure to stay close to Reagan, never letting herself fall more than a few feet behind. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two sides of the trail. She wasn’t going to let anything get the drop on them. Not that anything would. They were still close enough to the campground that most wildlife knew to stay away. Cadence thought she spotted a raccoon in the trees, but it ran away too fast for her to know for certain.  
  
Reagan started making small talk as they reached a comfortable walking pace. She had a few questions about kindred matters: basic things, like what it was like to be one and what (if any) of the folklore was true about them. Cadence answered what she could. Common sense said she should keep her mouth shut, especially in front of a future mage, but Vivianne and Reagan had placed a good amount of trust in her. She figured it was only fair that she return it.  
  
There were a few times Cadence wanted to ask questions of her own. She had so many! What happened to Reagan after Cadence left the home? Did she ever end up with a good family? Did she have a boyfriend? A girlfriend? How did she meet Vivianne? But every time Cadence thought she had the courage to ask, the words got stuck in her throat. Reagan wasn’t saying much about herself at all, and she wasn’t really probing that hard with the questions she asked about Cadence. Her tone was polite, but cautious. And why shouldn’t she be? She and Cadence were just two strangers walking in the dark.  
  
It was probably better that way.  
  
Cadence wondered, though, what exactly Reagan thought about her presence. Why was she okay walking through the woods with a predator?  
  
“If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly did Vivianne say about me being here?” Cadence took a few steps closer to Reagan to make sure she could hear the response.  
  
“She didn’t say a lot.” Reagan huffed. “She says it’s best not to know certain things. Part of our practice is mystery and, uh, confronting the unknown. But she says that you’re a creature of the night, I guess is the way to put it? And that you have some place in whatever our order is trying to accomplish. At least as far as I’m concerned. And that having you around will help me understand what I need to understand, and to, um, achieve what I need to achieve.”  
  
That was one way of phrasing it. Cadence doubted “make you remember your past trauma” was a reassuring justification for pairing a person up with someone, so it made sense that Vivianne would keep quiet about their shared past.  
  
“The way I understand it,” Reagan continued, “is that there’s another reality to this reality. Most people are asleep to it. But if you a waken to it, you can control it. You can understand it fully and… and gain mastery over it. Vivianne says that I’m , like, halfway in between. My eyes are still closed, but I can still sense some things. She’s trying to help me get all the way. She says this is what needs to happen for me to do that, and I trust her, so that’s what we’re doing.”  
  
“Well I said I’d protect you and that’s what I’m gonna do.” Cadence cracked her knuckles for emphasis. Even if Reagan didn’t recognize her, Cadence could still try to make a competent impression. “I’m curious though. Where, ah, where do people like me fit into all that?”  
  
“Vivianne says that your kind are… well, you’re asleep, but you dream of the real world, and so you can walk in it.”  
  
“I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.”  
  
“Yeah, I don’t know either.” Reagan shrugged. “That’s just what she said. And I guess that makes sense, given what little I can surmise about you.”  
  
“Sure? Maybe? I dunno.” Cadence shoved her hands back in her pockets.  
  
Reagan stopped walking. She put her fist to her chin for a moment or two, and then spoke again, with a little more trepidation. “Well you are dead, right?”

“Oh, one hundred percent. Dead as a fucking doornail.”  
  
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Reagan’s words were no more than a whisper that time. She started walking again, this time at a faster pace. A dozen or so feet later she veered off the trail and into the trees. Cadence sped up as well. She kept the same, short distance between them as she had before.

Reagan paused every so often to look around for herself. It looked like she was keeping and eye out for something specific - trail markers, landmarks, that sort of thing - but whatever exactly they were Cadence couldn’t tell. Reagan seemed confident in her course, though, so Cadence didn’t spend too much time worrying about it. All her worries went to spotting anything else that might be on the lookout for them.  
  
There wasn’t much. Cadence didn’t see or sense anything other than dense, but otherwise mundane, wilderness. At the very least, her beast wasn’t recoiling in fear of the overgrown unknown. Maybe the Gangrel blood in her was worth something out here after all.

Eventually, Reagan stopped. She raised her hand to let Cadence know to stop as well, but by the time Cadence looked back from her surveying, it was too late. She only barely avoided barrelling into Reagan from behind. Reagan didn’t seem to notice. She was rustling through her backpack. Cadence peeked around Reagan’s shoulder to see why they stopped.  
  
A few inches in front of Reagan was a small gap between two trees, and in that g ap was a ring or small stones and toadstools. Reagan knelt down next to it. She’d pulled a small saucer and a tiny bottle of milk out of her bag. She poured some of the milk into the saucer.  
  
“You should probably make an offering of some sort,” she said as she placed the saucer down.  
  
“What sort of offering?”  
  
“Something that the little ones like. Or something dear to you. If you don’t know what that is, well, you know… mysteries and all that. We don’t have all the answers.”  
  
Cadence grit her teeth. She didn’t know what a “little one” was, let alone what they might like. And why the hell would she have something dear to her with her? As if she’d drag something important on a hike in the middle of nowhere. She did think a moment, though, and she did have something powerful on her. Or in her, rather. Cadence raised her right thumb to her mouth and bit down into it with one of her fangs. A small bead of vitae welled up from the puncture. Cadence scooted up to Reagan’s side, knelt down, and smeared the blood on top of one of the toadstools.  
  
“Think that’ll work?”  
  
Reagan looked a little bit surprised. “Yeah, I mean, blood is powerful. And I assume yours is more powerful than most. It’ll either really please them or really offend them. I can’t say which is which.”  
  
Cadence considered making a joke about it probably being the latter, but she thought better of it.  
  
“Well I mean, it’s not something my type gives up easily,” she said instead. “It usually means something important when we do. And like I said, my specific type is a little more… attuned, I guess, to the wild than the rest. So let’s hope that means something.”  
  
“Yeah, let’s go with that.” Reagan didn’t sound like she really believed it. Which was fine. Cadence didn’t really believe it either. Cadence took a step back to give Reagan room to stand up and sling her backpack back on. Reagan took a deep breath, stared beyond the two trees with determined eyes, and stepped through the ring. Cadence waited a moment, then did the exact same thing.  
  
The woods on this side of the ring felt different. The shadows looked a little longer than before. The trees seemed taller. The sounds of crickets and cicadas gave way to screeching birds and the scurrying of prey animals in the underbrush. Cadence thought she might have felt a chill, even though the cold normally didn’t bother her.  
  
Cadence rolled her shoulders. She closed the distance between herself and Reagan to only about a foot or so, and went back to surveying the land around them. She couldn’t see anything yet, but if things were going to get weird, now would be the time.  
  
She just hoped she was ready for it.


	2. Chapter 2

Reagan stopped ten or so feet from the toadstool circle and turned to face Cadence. Her grip on her flashlight was tighter than before, and the knuckles on the hand holding her backpack strap were white with tension.  
  
“Well, we’re in the Real Woods now,” she said. “So it’s less about following marks and more about finding a good place. A right place. And I… I don’t know where any of those are. So we’ll just have to know it when we see it.”  
  
“So what exactly are we looking for?” Cadence leaned forward and looked around the forest. “Can’t say anything about this place looks ‘good’ or ‘right’ right at all.”  
  
“A feeling. Like something out of the ordinary. Something that doesn’t really fit with the dank underbrush. Like I said, we’ll - or I’ll - know it when I see it. But if you see something, let me know and we’ll see.”  
  
“If you say so.” Cadence doubted she’d be the one to spot it anyway. Her job was to look for danger, and if the hairs standing up on the back of her neck were any indication, danger wouldn’t be hard to find.

Reagan didn’t say anything else. Instead she started walking again, pushing her way through wild undergrowth and tightly packed tree trunks. There wasn’t anything resembling a formal trail system, or any sort of natural markers. Some areas were more beaten down than others - Cadence guessed from animals - but Reagan didn’t follow those. Cadence tried to keep up as best she could. Her strides were shorter, though, and she very nearly tripped over several tree roots that jutted out of the forest floor. She walked into a spiderweb and spent a good minute trying to free herself from the myriad of silk tendrils clinging to her face. Thick, heavy clouds began to roll in overheard, blocking out what little moonlight they had to light their way.  
  
The “Real Woods,” Cadence decided, were absolutely miserable.  
  
Cadence wasn’t sure how long she and Reagan spent wandering. It was impossible to keep track of time, and the minutes felt like hours. She wasn’t sure if it was the lack of light or the fact that she was on high alert. Probably both. She kept glancing over her shoulder every few moments, no matter how certain she tried to tell herself that there was nothing at their back.

Then she saw a pair of bright, glowing eyes in the underbrush. They were probably from something like a raccoon or a fox - they weren’t very high off the ground, and whatever it was wasn’t making much noise. The eyes followed Cadence and Reagan for a good while, though, staying a steady ten feet behind them. Cadence whipped around and snarled at whatever it was, bending low to glare at it. Feral claws extended from her fingers in an instant, raised to attack, as she bared her fangs.  
  
It felt good to let loose like that, to let her pursuer know exactly who was in charge. When was the last time she got to assert her dominance like that? Too long. She was a predator, dammit! She shouldn't have to hide it.  
  
A shrill yip filled the night air and the eyes disappeared. Forest debris rustled as the animal fled. Cadence smirked. She stood tall, retracted her claws, and turned back around. Reagan was standing perfectly still, eyes wide and mouth agape. The hand holding on to her flashlight was shaking a little bit.

Cadence’s gut coiled into a million tiny knots. “Oh, oh, fuck! I’m sorry! I didn’t to-”

“No, it’s fine!” Reagan must have been holding her breath. Her words came out surrounded by a loud gasp. “That’s… that’s cool! I just… I’ve never seen anything like it before!”  
  
“Really?” The knots turned to butterflies.  
  
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, my heart’s kinda beating here. That was a little scary, but… cool.”  
  
“Oh, well, um… thanks.” Cadence lowered her head and pulled the brim of her hat down to hide the wide grin that spread across her face.  
  
Reagan took a minute to catch her breath and compose herself before starting her search back up. Cadence followed at a quicker, more enthusiastic pace. They wandered for another five minutes or so before Reagan took a sudden, determined turn. Cadence wasn’t sure what caught the girl’s attention, but it had to be something big. Reagan pulled a large hunting knife out of her backpack and started hacking away at a thick density of bushes. Cadence stepped forward to help, She didn’t bring her claws out, but she pulled whatever Reagan cut away so they could move a little bit easier. Before long , the two girls fought their way through to the other side and stumbled into a clearing.  
  
Even Cadence could tell that the place was magical in some way. The clouds were parted enough overhead to let a wide, bright waterfall of moonlight flow over the soft moss and grass that padded the earth. The sounds of the animals and insects in the rest of the forest seemed quieter there. A supernatural sense of calm radiated outward from it. For a moment, Cadence could barely even sense her own Beast.  
  
“I think we found it!” Reagan grinned as they stepped forward into the clearing.  
  
“Yeah… I think we did…” Cadence whispered. “It’s beautiful.”  
  
“There’s a lot of terrible, dark places in the world. But there’s also places like this.” Reagan walked to the center of the clearing and took off her backpack. She set it on the ground and started unpacking. “I’m certain. This has to be it.”  
  
Cadence nodded. She took a seat on the ground not far from the treeline. She stared up at the moon while Reagan unpacked. Part of her wished she ’d brought a camera. Cadence was pretty sure Benji would have liked to see this place.  
  
Reagan set about preparing what magic ritual she needed to complete. She lit several small fires around the edge; they were mostly for light, it seemed, as she shut off her flashlight and stowed it away once all the flames were burning. She went back to the center of the clearing and arranged some of her magical items around her. Cadence tilted her head to try and get a better look at some of them.  
  
Then Reagan started taking off her clothes.  
  
Cadence’s eyes went wide. She angled her eyes to the ground and pulled the brim of her hat lower. “Is, uh, is that necessary?”  
  
“I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable.” Reagan didn’t stop undressing. “It’s just that we - well, I - have to do this skyclad.”  
  
“Well, uh, okay then. I’ll just, ah, be over here…” Cadence stood up and walked a little further away. She turned to face the treeline. She’d heard the jokes about magic done naked under the moonlight, but damn, she didn’t ever expect to see someone _actually_ doing naked magic in the moonlight! Least of all her goddamn baby foster sister! “You sure you’re okay with that?”  
  
“Why shouldn’t I be? I’m not ashamed of this.”  
  
Cadence grit her teeth. She occasionally snuck glances back toward Reagan - to make sure nothing else wandered into the clearing - but she was careful not to let her eyes linger too long. She did stare a little bit when she noticed a large, crescent-shaped birthmark on Reagan’s thigh, but the embarrassment caught up with her quickly enough and she dragged her gaze back to the trees.  
  
Cadence heard Reagan go through a few more preparations. There was the sound of water being poured, and something being burned in one of the fires, along with the smell of heavier smoke.  
  
“Okay, so those are the preparations.” Cadence heard Reagan rub her hands together as she spoke. “Now it’s time. Now it’s time… okay…” She took a deep breath. “All right, so I know you weren’t told about this, Cadence, but there is something, uh, specific that is needed of you.”  
  
Of course there was. “And what’s that?” Cadence had a pretty good guess what Reagan meant. But she knew what people said about assumptions.  
  
“Well like I said before, you have power of your own. And, I need to try to… well, uh, my test… the thing that will put me through to the deeper connection to life, the world, and the other side, is to refine some of that power.”  
  
Cadence groaned. She turned back to face Reagan, who was looking down at a ritual knife that was laid out next to a metal bowl. “You need my blood, don’t you?”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”  
  
“How much?”  
  
“Fill the bowl?”  
  
Cadence walked over, grabbed both the knife and the bowl, and started walking toward one of the fires that lined the clearing. “You stay there. I’ll come back when it’s full.”  
  
“Sure, if that’s what you wanna do.”  
  
“It is.” If only it was just a matter of wanting! Cadence knew how her Beast felt about bloodletting. It hated feeding Benji, and it certainly wasn’t going to like giving up anything for a mage to use in a ritual. She wasn’t going to risk it snapping out like it had when she scared off the animal before. Not with Reagan in snapping distance.  
  
Cadence set the bowl on the ground and knelt over it. Holding her left wrist out, she dragged the edge of a vein and willed her still blood to flow. Dark, viscous vitae poured from the wound into the bowl. The Beast was, surprisingly but thankfully, quiet. As soon as the bowl was full , she let the wound knit itself closed. Cadence stood, picked up the bowl, wiped the knife on her pants, and walked back over to Reagan.  
  
“Do you need anything else?”  
  
“No.” Reagan took the bowl from her. “Just, you know, be ready if something happens.”  
  
Cadence nodded.  
  
Reagan sat down. She dipped her finger in the vitae and started using it to draw sigils on her flesh. When that was done , she turned her attention to the bowl. She stared hard at it, as if she were trying to drill holes through the bowl with her mind. Cadence couldn’t help but feel a little curious at what exactly the result would be. She didn’t turn away this time, but instead watched Reagan try and do… whatever it was she was trying to do.  
  
A few minutes passed. The vitae in the bowl remained still.  
  
“Okay… all right…” Reagan’s voice was hushed. Trembling. “There’s a few ways to do this. We’ve tried a lot of them. There must… there just must be something wrong with me. Apparently.” She let out a bitter laugh.

“Now let’s not jump to any conclusions, here!” Cadence knelt down and looked Reagan dead in the eye. “Kindred blood has an expiration date of like, two minutes. It probably just went bad before you got the hang of things.”  
  
“Oh! Well that’s just great! Fantastic!” Reagan laughed again. She took the bowl, held it out from her ritual space, and upended the whole thing. Cadence winced as she watched her vitae slowly seep into the ground.  
  
“Is there anything I can do to help?”  
  
“I don’t - I don’t know!” Reagan took a deep breath. She ran a hand through her hair. “I’m trying to clear my mind. I’ve been trying to clear my mind like I’ve been told to clear my mind, and you know, give up everything that I _think_ that I know, and all the things that have happened in the past. I’ve done everything I can think of!” She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “I just don’t know what else there is...”

Reagan looked like she was about to burst into tears. Cadence felt a pressure on her chest she hadn’t felt in decades. She leaned forward and placed her hand gently on Reagan’s shoulder. She wanted so badly to do something comforting, something that mattered. She wanted to be able to help. All the while, Vivianne’s words echoed in the forefront of her mind.  
  
_She might have to remember._  
  
“Don’t worry. You’re gonna get this.” Cadence tried to sound as confident as possible. “But first off, do you mind if I, uh, ask you some questions?”  
  
Reagan sniffled and nodded. “Sure, yeah. Questions are good.”  
  
“Okay. First: Are you _sure_ this is something you want?”  
  
“More than anything!” Reagan stared into Cadence’s eyes with a mix of awe and determination. “I’ve seen the things that Vivianne can do, and I want to be a part of that.”  
  
“You’re not doing just because they want you to? Because someone else is pushing you?”  
  
“No! I’m not being pressured or anything like that.”  
  
“Good. Because I wanna help you, but I know what it’s like to be forced into something and I’m not about to let that happen to anyone else.” Cadence plopped down from her knees, ending up sitting cross-legged on the ground. “Now, it looks to me like something else big is bugging you, so we’re gonna talk it out. And when we’ve talked it out, we’ll try the whole blood thing again.”  
  
“Okay, okay. You’re right. That’s a good idea.” Reagan closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “To make this happen you’re supposed to be _totally_ unburdened by your life as a person, as a sleeper. You’re supposed to have confronted everything that holds you back, that ties you down.” Her voice started trembling again. “You’re supposed to be _truly_ ready to see the world as it is, and _yourself_ without all the masks and the veils. When you do that - see the world for what it truly is - that’s when your eyes open. You awaken.”  
  
Cadence nodded. She didn’t really understand it - she and deeper thought never really got along - but there was something about the way Reagan spoke that captivated her. There was so much passion her voice, such utter devotion to her goal. It was unlike anything Cadence had heard before. Cadence had met passionate people. There were plenty in the Anarchs, kindred whose souls were wound tight into every word they spoke. But that was passion born from conflict, blood, and anger. Reagan’s felt different. It was gentle.  
  
“I’ve been through a lot of talks, a lot of meditations, even therapy here and there. I just don’t know what else there is. Like I don’t… I don’t know. There must be something!”  
  
“What if - and this might sound crazy - but what if there was something you couldn’t remember?” Cadence spoke cautiously. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to dredge up things that were best left forgotten.  
  
“That might be it.” Reagan lowered her head in thought. “There’s a lot from when I was a kid that I don’t remember. I’ve tried, and people I’ve talked to said some stuff happened, and I kind of know some things. But it’s like it happened to somebody else. Like I can read about it, but I don’t remember it happening to _me_.”  
  
A massive lump formed in Cadence’s throat. She tried to swallow it, but it stayed put, glued to to her voice box. “I might have some thoughts on that,” she whispered. “But just a warning: This is about to get real awkward.”  
  
“It’s already pretty awkward.”  
  
Cadence chuckled at that. “Vivianne didn’t ask me out here just so you could play around with my blood, you know. I, ah, I used to know you, way back when. We shared a foster family. It wasn’t for very long so I’m not surprised you don’t remember. But I remember you. I guess Vivianne thought I that meant I could help.”  
  
Reagan took a moment to process that. It looked like gears were turning in her head, like she was trying to find some nugget in her mind to confirm Cadence’s story. Cadence let her have that, and then continued. Her chest felt a little warm, thinking about the first few months she and Reagan knew each other.  
  
“I don’t know if it was your first home or what, but you were so, so _okay_. I’d been in a lot of homes in my day, seen a lot of broken kids. I was one of ‘em. You weren't. I wanted to keep it that way. So I tried to look out for you. You couldn’t have been older than six. I was sixteen.”  
  
Reagan looked puzzled for a moment. “But you don’t look - no, wait, you wouldn’t.”  
  
“I left not long after we met. The guy who made me like this found me not long after that.” The warmth started to fade.  
  
“Why’d you leave?”  
  
“I, uh, I put our foster dad in the ICU.” Cadence balled her hands into fists. She couldn’t even remember what he looked like, but just the thought of the man sent bolts of rage all throughout her body. “I’m not a good person, Reagan. I hurt people. But I only hurt people who deserve it. And he... oh, _fuck_ , did he deserve it.”  
  
Something that might have been recognition flashed across Reagan’s face. Cadence froze for a moment. Part of her hoped that was enough, that the story was at the point where it would kick-start Reagan’s brain and Cadence wouldn’t have to say any more. But the look on Reagan’s face passed as quickly as it’d come.  
  
“I got up one night to go to the bathroom.” Cadence couldn’t bring herself to speak in anything louder than a whisper. “Your room was right down the hall. I heard the door open, and I looked and there he was, walking inside.”  
  
“You heard him?” Reagan was whispering too.  
  
Cadence nodded. “Yeah. So I followed him in.”  
  
“What did he do?” There was definitely recognition in Reagan’s voice this time. Or understanding, at the very least. She looked at Cadence with wide, hazel eyes, like she was begging Cadence to say anything other than the obvious.  
  
“It’s all a blur now.” Cadence didn’t have the courage to look at Reagan. She stared at her fists instead. “I… I saw him in there, doing… _things_ and I just. I saw red. I don’t know what he even had _time_ to do, I was on him so fast. I remember pushing him down, cracking his skull against the floor. And then cracking it again. There was so much blood.” Cadence closed her eyes. She could feel her Beast’s disgust. _“Why the hesitation?”_ it asked. _“Be proud of what you are.”_  
  
Cadence forced herself to look at Reagan, at the realization and shock in the girl’s eyes. She forced herself to remember the way Reagan had cried that night. She had to remind herself _that_ was why.  
  
“He was in my room. He was in my room.” Reagan’s breath came in deep, heavy heaves. “It’s you. It’s really you, isn’t it? Oh God.” She sounded just as fearful remembering that as she did their foster dad.  
  
“Yeah, it was me”  
  
“I don’t know what to do with this.”  
  
“I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“No, no. You’re not scaring me.” Reagan took the bowl from beside her and stared into it. Some of Cadence’s vitae still clung to the walls. “That just put some things into place. It’s weird. It’s like you know something, you _know_ it, but you don’t?”  
  
“I know exactly how that feels.” It was Cadence’s turn to let her discomfort turn to laughter. “It know it’s not really the same, but when I got turned into, well, _this_ ,” She motioned up and down her body with an open palm, “It took me years to finally get it through my head just what happened.”  
  
Relief washed over Reagan’s face. Whether it was from not having to talk about what happened to her, or knowing she wasn’t alone, Cadence couldn't tell. But it was something. The tension melted from Reagan’s shoulders and she spoke with a little more confidence. “The guy you did it to you, did he, well, did he he do it _to_ you or did you have a choice?”  
  
“He jumped me. Saw something he liked and took it. I didn’t know what was going on until it was over.”  
  
“That’s not right.”  
  
“No, it’s not.” It was surprisingly easy for Cadence to talk about her Embrace. She’d never discussed it with anyone before. She thought she should feel angry or upset. She didn’t.  
  
The two girls sat there in silence for a minute or two. Cadence wasn’t sure where else to take the conversation. It didn’t look like Reagan knew either. It was completely uncomfortable, though. Maybe it was just emotional exhaustion. Cadence didn’t feel like questioning it.  
  
Then the clouds started getting a little thicker, blocking out the patch of moonlight over the clearing. Thunder roared in the distance. Reagan looked at the storm in the distance. She took a deep breath flexed her hands.  
  
“Okay. Well, I don’t know if I can get over all that right now, but maybe we can try again?”  
  
“Let’s.” Cadence gave Reagan what she hoped was a confident smile. “Don’t worry. You’re gonna kick this trial’s ass.”  
  
Reagan smiled back. It was a weak smile, but it was there. She handed the bowl and the knife to Cadence. “All right, then. I’m going to need more.”  
  
Cadence took the items and marched back over to the edge of the fires. She pulled the knife across her arm one more time, and the vitae flowed one more time. Her Beast roared up inside her. She felt it’s rage burning the edges of her consciousness. The image of Reagan’s corpse in her arms filled Cadence’s vision once more. She closed her eyes and grit her teeth.  
  
“I said not today, asshole.”  
  
Cadence brought the full bowl back to Reagan. She walked a little faster this time. Reagan took the bowl and when through the same motions as before. This time she worked with much less hesitation. She replaced the dried sigils on her skin with fresh, wet ones. She placed her hands over what remained in the bowl and focused with more intensity and determination than before.  
  
This time, the blood responded.  
  
Cadence smelled it before she saw it. Kindred blood smelled thicker than mortal blood. The power in it had an obvious, bitter tinge. Whatever Reagan was doing diluted that. Looking into the bowl, Cadence saw the vitae was thinning. It looked more like colored water than blood. A moment later a thin, ruby red trail of liquid grew upwards from it, like a blade of liquid glass.  
  
Reagan was utterly transfixed by her work. She seemed to lose all awareness of the world around her as she stared at the blood. She reached out to touch it and it cut easily through her skin. Rivulets of Reagan’s own blood dripped down the blade and mingled with the vitae in the bowl.  
  
Cadence covered her nose and took a step back to keep her Beast from lunging at the bowl. But as she did so the plants on the ground - grass and moss and tiny seedlings - burst upward in a surge of manic growth. Cadence very nearly tripped over them. Reagan’s eyes rolled back in her skull. She fell backwards against the plant life. It lifted her up and curled around her like vines. Lightning crashed nearby and rain started pouring from the sky. The fires lining the clearing went out.  
  
Movement rustled the leaves in the trees around the clearing. Cadence moved to Reagan and knelt defensively, extending her claws just in case. She looked up to the canopy just in time to see a vaguely human-shaped shadow leap between the branches in the forest canopy. It stopped not far from the clearing.

Then its head rotated like an owl’s to face her. A pair of glowing, white, unnaturally large eyes locked with her own.

Deep inside the dark recesses of her mind, Cadence’s Beast whimpered.


	3. Chapter 3

The creature’s glare washed over Cadence like a wave of ice, freezing her limbs in place. Her entire body was numb. Her _mind_ was numb. She could see the shadowy, pale-eyed creature, but it was like looking through a cloudy pane of glass. She tried to sense her legs, to try and lunge toward the creature, but it was too much to fight the rising tide of fear inside her. Her Beast was terrified beyond anything Cadence had felt in the past. Half of her nerves were screaming for her to run. The other half wanted to roll over and show her belly.  
  
It was taking all of Cadence’s willpower just to stand still. She couldn’t hold the position for long. She’d never felt her Beast this strongly before. She’d never felt it want to _submit_ before. The smart thing would be to let it run, to flee the woods entirely and hope Reagan was enough of a distraction for the creature. Cadence pushed every o u nce of control she had against her Beast. In the split second she had before it overcame her, she forced one command on it:  
  
Kneel.  
  
Cadence was on the ground before she knew what was happening. It was like she was a stranger in her own body. She could barely feel her own muscles. The Beast cowered before the shadow in the trees, head tilted and neck exposed. There was nothing standing between her and a final death.  
  
The creature moved from the branches to the ground. It flowed down the tree trunk and reformed itself from a viscous puddle on the forest floor. It slid toward the clearing at a slow, but determined pace. Lighting cracked as it reached the edge, illuminating the creature for just a moment.  
  
It was a woman. A skeletal, leathery, _ancient-looking_ woman. What passed for skin clung tight to thin bones and gnarled joints. Cadence wouldn’t even even call it a woman. Just woman-like. The creature was wrapped in a decrepit black cloak. It moved like liquid, dragging itself without moving a muscle, toward the center of the clearing. It paused a few feet in, looked at Cadence, and then turned its glowing white gaze to Reagan.  
  
Cadence reached deep down within herself for any scraps of willpower that might still be floating around. It seemed like an eternity that she had been trying to force the Beast’s will down. If only she could get control of her legs, then she could at least move!  Her limbs refused to budge. The Beast was too strong. Her goddamn pansy-ass Beast, too scared to do anything that could actually make a difference. Cadence had never hated it more, never wanted it out of her head more.

Then she remembered Vivianne’s medallion.  
  
Cadence rallied her will and focused on her right hand instead. She felt the Beast ’ s control waver for just a second, focused as it was on keeping the rest of her still. Cadence tried to wiggle her fingers. It worked. Before she lost the momentum, Cadence raised her hand and shoved it into her pocket. The little clay medallion crumbled against her knuckles.  
  
The Beast was gone.  
  
Not quiet. Not quelled or cowed. _Gone._  
  
Cadence couldn’t let herself be distracted by the sudden quiet in her brain. She had to _act._ Cadence lunged at the woman-like monster. She put her full weight into the tackle, her arms wrapped around the creature’s thin waist in an unshakable grip.

The creature didn’t move. It should have moved. There was almost no weight to it. Cadence might as well have been grappling a bag of twigs. But for some reason the creature resisted. It continued moving toward Reagan at the same slow, vicious pace. One wrinkled, twisted hand slid out from the cloak and grabbed Cadence by the arm.  
  
The next thing Cadence knew, her back was slamming into a tree trunk a good five feet away.  
  
The force of the impact rattled Cadence’s brain something awful. She pushed herself up from the trunk, but the world was spinning around her and she collapsed back against the tree until the vertigo passed. By the time her senses righted themselves, the creature was at Reagan’s side, kneeling over the helpless girl and slowly raising a hand to touch her.  
  
“Get the _fuck_ away from her!” Cadence roared and lunged again, calling on her vitae to push her forward in a massive leap.She didn’t try to take the creature down, though. She wedged herself between it and Reagan instead. Cadence wrapped her arms around her sister and tried to tear her free from the plants. She managed to break some, but others grew back to take their place within moments. Cadence let out a frustrated growl. “Reagan! Wake the fuck up, dammit! You gotta run!”  
  
The creature slipped it’s hand under Cadence’s hat and tangled its fingers in her hair. The hat fell to the ground as the creature picked Cadence up, with no more effort than it would take to lift a leaf. It placed her down a few inches away.  
  
Cadence would not be deterred. She whipped her right hand up, her claws extending with the momentum, and tore into the creature’s wrist. She felt the leather skin give way at the force of her blow and heard the satisfying snap of the creature’s thin bones.  
  
And yet, by the barest scrap of tendons, the hand stayed attached. It hung only slightly loose. The creature placed its hands gently on Reagan’s stomach. Reagan started murmuring something in a language Cadence couldn’t understand. It sounded like she was carrying on a conversation with a silent partner. The creature moved a hand to Reagan’s back and tried to lift her from the plants.  
  
“I said GET AWAY! _”_ Cadence took another desperate swing at at the creature. She drove her claws deep into monster’s side, through the ribs to pierce some sort of withered organ. She pulled her hand back. Thick rotten blood trickled from the wound and clung to Cadence’s arm. Cadence’s stomach turned at the smell of it.  
  
The creature removed its hands from Reagan. Its head rotated to face Cadence. Then the rest of it rotated. Its tattered cloak started to fall away, and though its body was just as withered as the rest of it, a strange power burst forth like a shockwave. It rattled Cadence’s bones and chilled her nerves. She wouldn’t kneel this time, though. It didn’t matter how far out of her league this was. She _would_ protect Reagan.  
  
Cadence took a few steps back. She had its attention now. If she played her cards right she wouldn’t have to fight it. All she had to do was run fast enough to get it away from Reagan. She walked backwards a few more steps, then turned to break into a sprint.  
  
The creature was on her in an instant. Cadence didn’t even see it move, but before she had a chance to react, the creature had closed the distance, grabbed her by the jaw, and lifted her up. Cadence kicked and squirmed. She tore at the creature’s arms with her claws. The struggle did nothing. The creature brought its face close to hers. It hissed at Cadence, its breath carrying the nauseating scent of rot and decay. Cadence bared her fangs and growled.  
  
The creature flung her to the ground. Cadence grunted as her side collided with the cold, hard earth. She tried to stand up but the creature grabbed her and began dragging her toward the treeline. Cadence swiped at the creature’s side once more, tearing a great chunk of dry flesh and leathery skin from its body.  
  
The creature continued dragging Cadence into the forest. Nothing she could do would slow it down. Cadence glanced back at her sister, who was still unresponsive in the plants’ grasp.  
  
Dead debris and underbrush left long scratches in Cadence’s skin. The creature didn’t take her far, though. They were still within sight of Reagan. It looked like the creature was looking for something specific, judging by the way its glowing gaze scanned the woods. Eventually the creature caught sight of a rocky slope and drifted over it.

The creature flipped Cadence over its shoulder, smashing her into the rocks and snapping her ribs with the impact. The bones jutted into organs that, despite having been dead and nonfunctional for decades, still hurt like hell from the pressure. The creature took one finger and drove in through Cadence’s shoulder, piercing the rock itself in the process. Cadence bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.  
  
Meanwhile, the creature bent down and started sifting through the underbrush. Cadence didn’t bother fighting at this point. There was no use in it. At the very least she’d stolen the creature’s attention from Reagan. Maybe it would buy Reagan enough time to wake up and escape. That would be enough of a win for Cadence. Now if she’d actually thought to leave more blood for Benji, then she’d really be set.  
  
The creature stopped rustling through the plants and leaves. Its fingers extended into foul, needle-sharp tendrils that pierced the earth. It rooted around in the ground, glanced back a t Reagan for a second, and then pulled a lopsided lump of something from deep within the dirt. She brought it high over Cadence’s head, the brought it down with monstrous speed. Cadence winced, waiting for the blow to come down on her skull.  
  
The creature cracked the stone on the rocky slope just an inch from Cadence’s ear. She heard the majority of it crumble away, felt hard chunks of it tumbl e down her shoulder, and when the creature pulled its hand away it was holding a small chunk of dark metal. The creature rolled it between its long fingers, shaping the metal like clay. The creature removed the finger it had in Cadence’s shoulder and started shaping it with both hands.  
  
Cadence knew it wasn’t any use, but she still took advantage of the distraction by trying to stab the claws on her right hand into the creature’s face. It blocked the strike with ease, grabbing Cadence’s wrist mid-swing and holding it tight while it continued to roll the metal between its fingertips. The creature moved the hand that gripped her down Cadence’s arm in one swift, almost imperceptible motion. Its talon-like fingers were tangled in her hair before she could react. A moment later it threw her to the ground, holding her head to the ground and digging her left cheek into the dirt. Dull pain radiated through Cadence’s skill. Her vision blurred. She tried to open her mouth, to try and rouse Reagan with one last shout, but she couldn’t move her jaw under the pressure of the creature’s grip.  
  
Cadence felt pressure on her right elbow, pressure that pinned it to the ground with more weight than the creature should have had. Despite her blurred vision, she could still see one of its withered feet digging into her joint. Its other hand was still playing with the metal, which by now looked like a spindly needle of ridges and barbs.  
  
Slowly, deliberately, it lowered the object with its sharpened fingers to Cadence’s right hand. The barbs pierced her skin only a little at first. The punctures didn’t even bleed right away.  
  
Then the creature shoved the metal down with unnatural force.

Cadence screamed. Pain seared through her nerves like fire, radiating out from her palm to her fingertips, and down her arm almost to the elbow. It blazed behind her closed eyelids as the creature dug in, twisting the barbed metal between muscle and bone and tendon. Thick drops of vitae pooled around the wound and clung in viscous tendrils as the creature pulled its fingers free. The metal remained inside her. It grew and expanded, snaking around the bones in her arm and wrist and fingers with ease. Cadence saw the base of her claws turn gray. They grew a good inch longer. The metal flowed up through them, replacing the organic matter with itself, until there was nothing left of Cadence’s actual claws.  
  
The creature moved both of its hands to Cadence’s shoulders, keeping her pinned that way. It stared down at her with those massive, glowing white eyes, and Cadence couldn’t help but stare back into them. It wasn’t the same compulsion she’d felt before - her Beast was still almost nonexistent in her mind - but she still couldn’t bring herself to look away. It was hypnotic. She almost didn’t notice the creature’s jaw distended from the rest of its face.  
  
Then it started to sing.  
  
It wasn’t any sort of formal melody. The creature’s voice was harsh and alien, somewhere between a guttural scream and the screech of nails being dragged down a blackboard. Yet it was still somehow recognizable as a song. The creature sang even as its body started to fall apart. But rather than decay like a withered corpse should, its flesh transmuted into a myriad of vermin. Snakes, rats, and insects of all types fell down on Cadence. There were more of them than it seemed there was matter in the creature. Within seconds Cadence found herself buried under their squirming, biting, slithering forms. She tried to push them off, but there were too many to keep up.  
  
“Stop!”  
  
A clear, confident voice echoed from beyond the pile. The vermin immediately scatt e red. Cadence was free just as quickly as she’d been buried. She groaned and forced herself to sit up. Her vision was still a little blurry, but as it cleared she saw Reagan standing over her with wide, worried eyes.  
  
“Cadence! Oh, my God, Cadence! Are you okay?”  
  
“Maybe...?” Cadence steadied her head with her left hand. It didn’t help at all with the pain. “Are- are you?”  
  
“I… I can’t even begin to describe what happened. But, but then I came back and saw _that…_ What the hell _was_ that?” Reagan words came punctuated between fast, heavy gasps.  
  
“I don’t fucking know. Fucking weird is what it was. I don’t even know...” Cadence held her right h and out at and stared at it. Her her fingers felt stiff, and as she flexed them she could feel the joints crack. The discomfort must have registered on her face, as Reagan looked even more worried.  
  
“It’s fine, it’s fine! Just take a minute!” Reagan knelt down beside Cadence and placed a hand on her shoulder. The warmth was nice. It was really, really nice.  
  
“There was this gnarly old corpse woman trying to hurt you,” she said. “I tried to fight her off but she wiped the goddamn floor with me. Then she pulls some metal hunk out of the ground and puts it in my hand and HOLY SHIT my claws are metal now!” Cadence held her right and out at and stared at it. She retracted them slowly. The metal felt cool as it dragged down into her hand.  
  
“You saw a woman?” Reagan didn’t seemed fazed by the claws, for reasons Cadence couldn’t begin to imagine.  
  
“Yeah. Well, something the kinda looked like one. It was more like a skeleton covered in rotten leather. With these big ol’ glowing white eyes.” Cadence shuddered. “It’s probably better than you didn’t see her.”  
  
“No, no! I did! She was here. But that wasn’t all she was.” Reagan lifted her hand to her lips as realization dawned on her. “It think… I think I can show you. Can I show you? I want - I _need -_ to get this out of my head.”  
  
“Sure?”  
  
Reagan placed her hands on Cadence’s temples. A vision of the clearing appeared in her mind, but not through her own eyes. She saw herself prowling the edges of the clearing, with Reagan at the center, having a conversation with the withered creature and second, barely visible presence. The creature wasn’t just itself. It was simultaneously dozens of other forms. There was a stunning dark-skinned woman of indescribable grace and serenity, an amalgamation of various animals that took a vaguely humanoid form, a man tattooed in glowing silver runes with an unmistakably pregnant belly, and so many more Cadence’s brain couldn’t process them all. She tried to make them out, but the vision faded before she could.  
  
“I am so very, very confused.” Cadence took Reagan’s hands in her own and lowered them from her head. “What _was_ that?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Reagan breathed. “I don’t know. It was… it was _me._ But at the same time not me? I can’t explain it. I just can’t explain it, but I _see_ now! I see the world now, I see _life_ now!” Reagan looked at Cadence with pride in her eyes. And then she looked at Cadence again, really looked at her, and the pride in her eyes turned to shock. She whipped her hands out of Cadence’s. “Oh… oh, God…”  
  
Cadence’s gut roiled. She clenched her fists to hard her nails drew a little blood from her palms. She should have seen this coming. Family had never been something she was good for.  
  
“I’m sorry.” Reagan turned away. “We should probably just get out of these woods.”  
  
“Yeah…” Cadence pushed herself up from the ground. She brushed by Reagan and walked back into the clearing. Reagan followed, and they gathered their items in silence.  
  
The walk back to the cabin didn’t seem to take as long as the hike from it, but it was miserable the entire way. Reagan seemed to bounce between moods of utter joy and endless confusion - which Cadence assumed was part of getting used to whatever awakened “sight” she had - but one thing remained constant: she couldn’t bring herself to look at Cadence. It looked like it almost physically pained her to do so. Cadence didn’t want to let it bother her. She really, really didn’t. But it still did. Reagan might as well have staked her.  
  
Eventually, as the got nearer to the cabin, Cadence finally managed to speak. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah.” Reagan’s voiced trembled. “But you aren’t...”  
  
“Nope. Haven’t been for a long time. But it’s fine. It’s really fine.”  
  
“No. No. You were alive once.” It sounded like Reagan was about to break out into tears. “I don’t know what it is in you, but it’s wrong. Whatever he did to you, whatever the man who made you did… it was wrong. He took something that was alive and beautiful and should have had it’s time in this place and… I’m sorry. It should never have happened to you.”  
  
“No, it shouldn’t have.” Cadence’s voice cracked as she tried to hold back her own sorrow. “It was wrong. It was real fucking wrong. But I can’t change it. And I’m okay with it.”  
  
“That’s... that’s good I guess, but I think if you could see what I can see, I don’t know if you could be.”  
  
Cadence stopped in the middle of the trail. Her entire body was shaking. “It’s one thing to see it, but I have to _live_ it. No one knows better than me how much it sucks to be me.”  
  
“I guess so.” Reagan turned her gaze to the ground. “Just… don’t give in. Don’t give in.”  
  
Cadence wasn’t sure what to say to that. She wanted to promise that she wouldn’t, that she could beat the Beast back, cage it up, and put it down like the rabid animal it was. But she couldn’t, so she shut her mouth and kept walking towards the campground.

Dawn was already breaking by the time they reached the cabin. Thankfully the sun’s rays hadn’t pierced the clouds yet, and Cadence was able to get indoors before the light touched her. She felt the urge to sleep tugging at her senses, though it wasn’t nearly as strong as she was used to. Reagan shut and locked the door softly behind them.  
  
“I know you need to sleep. ” Reagan bit her lower lip as she tried to find her words. “I just… I wanted to say thank you.”  
  
“You don’t have to.” Cadence found a corner where she could stand out of the way of any light coming in the windows. “I know I’m not right. I can… I can understand if you don’t wanna see me again after-”  
  
“No!” Reagan’s shout made Cadence jump just a little bit, and she turned to face her sister. Reagan looked surprisingly determined, more so than she had the entire evening. “I do! There’s just a lot I have to, that I’ve gotta…. There’s just things I have to do. I want to see you again. I just don’t know how often we can make that happen.”  
  
The butterflies in Cadence’s stomach started flying at full force. She pulled her hat down over her eyes and turned her face away. “I mean, if you want to. But you gotta know I’m not like you, Reagan. I’m not a good person. I’m an actual, literal monster.”  
  
“I know you feel that way.” Reagan took a few cautious steps towards Cadence. She reached forward with one gentle hand and lifted the brim of Cadence’s hat. Their eyes met.“You’re, well, maybe you’re not alive, but you’re still here. And I think that... that if you wanted to, you could, I don’t know, be less of a monster?” Reagan took a step back. “Like, I believe you. I’m not gonna try to invalidate what you know about yourself, but I just think that while you’re still here, while something is still keeping you alive… well… that you’ll always have a chance to be your best self.”  
  
Cadence’s lips ticked up in the tiniest of smiles. The butterflies were going wild. For the first time in a long time she felt a sliver of something that might have been called hope.  
  
“I’ll try,” she whispered. “Until then, well, I know you probably have a lot you need to do, but I need to sleep and I’d, ah, I’d appreciate it if you could…”  
  
“Oh, yeah, I don’t think the bathroom has any windows.” Reagan ran to the windows in the kitchen and living room and drew the curtains closed, given Cadence a safe path to the bathroom. “And don’t worry. I’ll stay.”  
  
Cadence’s smile turned into a full grin, though she tried to angle her face so Reagan couldn’t see it. She had to try and look at least a little cool in front of her little sister, after all. She grabbed a couple pillows off the couch and headed into the bathroom. Throwing the pillows down on the floor for some level of comfort, she let the day sleep claim her.  
  
\------  
  
She dreamed she was in the woods, running, tracking something. She could smell it. She could see it’s tracks. But as she stalked her prey, she knew that she too was being stalked. She had to catch her quarry before it caught her. She had to be the faster one.  
  
They found each other in the shadows of the trees. She stared it down - a great, dark, terrible stag with unknowable black eyes - and leapt toward it, iron talons drawn. The stag charged at her. They met halfway, and as its antlers ran her through, her talons drove through its ribs and found purchase in its heart. They sunk to the ground together, the stag’s corpse and her, and she knew that she’d won. She might not make it back, but in that deep and dark and terrible wood, she’d won.


End file.
